The Company We Keep

by Mary Monroe

  Thank God she still maintained a couple of male friends that she kept on the hook to satisfy her biological urges. A wicked smile crossed Nicole’s face. She was deep in thought, hoping she’d meet someone interesting that she could have a “regular” relationship with soon, when Teri’s line rang. It was Eric, that fine-ass photographer who had caught her roving eye at the Andrewses’ Valentine’s Day party.

  “Teri’s in a meeting,” she told him, her voice quivering. Something was wrong with this picture. No other man had ever made her this nervous. “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Just let her know I called,” he replied. He had such a crisp, professional-sounding voice.

  “Okay. And you have a nice day,” she said, biting her bottom lip. She sniffed and pressed her lips together, listening with the telephone pressed against her ear so hard it irritated her earlobe.

  “Sure,” he said. He didn’t hang up right away. She could still hear him breathing. “Nicole, you have a nice day, too,” he added. He still didn’t hang up.

  “Uh-huh,” she finally said. She had to move the telephone to her other ear and hold the damn thing with both hands.

  “Bye, Nicole. I hope I see you again soon,” he said quickly. His last comment made her heart skip a beat. Didn’t he look at her like she was something good to eat at the Andrewses’ party? How could such a smooth, polite, and pleasant brother like him be involved with a loud, matted, weave-wearing skank from ghetto hell like that Yvette? And now what in the world was he up to—obviously flirting with her? Well, she’d find out soon enough if it was the last thing she did. He had hung up but her telephone was still in her hand.

  “I need to set up a meeting this week with Trevor Powell,” Teri told Nicole. Nicole had been so deep in thought she didn’t even know that Teri had returned from a meeting and was standing right in front of her desk.

  “Huh?” She placed the telephone back in its place, blinking at it like she didn’t know what it was.

  “Nicole, are you all right? You look catatonic or something. And if I didn’t know any better, with that glazed look in your eyes, I’d swear you just had an orgasm,” Teri said with a dry chuckle. Then she gave Nicole an amused look that quickly turned to a look of envy.

  “I’m fine.” Nicole shook her head and started to fiddle around with the pens, pencils, and other knickknacks on her desk. “Uh, Eric called. That photographer.” She coughed and cleared her throat.

  “I’ll have to call him back later,” Teri mumbled, looking at her watch. “Grab your pad and pen. You and I have to talk to a blind rapper.” Teri rolled her eyes and beckoned Nicole to follow her.

  CHAPTER 27

  “A blind rapper. Humph! I’ve heard everything now. I don’t know what this world is coming to,” Teri mumbled as she and Nicole marched down the hall toward the conference room. “I don’t even want to think about what we’ll have to deal with next.”

  They were caught off guard by the blind rapper as they quietly entered the conference room. He was talking to somebody on his cell phone, but as soon as he realized they were in the room, he turned his head in their direction, grinning like a player with twenty-twenty vision. “Hello, ladies,” he said, his head rocking from side to side.

  Nicole looked at Teri and said in a low voice, “I thought you said he was blind.”

  “He is. Victor told me he could smell pussy and fish from a mile away. Only thing is, he can’t tell one from the other.” Teri didn’t tell Nicole that Victor had also said that whenever the blind man, whose name was Ernest Townes, passed a fish market he flashed his most flirtatious smile.

  “Well, it sure looks like he knows what we are,” Nicole mentioned.

  “We could be two catfish standing here for all he knows,” Teri insisted.

  “I will be with you ladies in a minute,” Ernest said, licking his bow-shaped lips. His dark glasses hid his eyes, but the rest of him didn’t look half bad. It was hard to tell his age. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five. Judging from his high cheekbones; smooth skin; and bone-straight, jet black hair slicked back in a duck tail, he had more than a few drops of Native American blood flowing through his veins. He returned his attention to his cell phone. Both Teri and Nicole were sorry that the man was blind and had been since the age of seven. But he was not to be pitied. Within a minute of their arrival he was fussing and cussing at the party on the other end of the line. “Fuck that shit! Hell no! Kiss my black ass!” he roared with his head and body rocking from side to side in the chair he occupied at the head of the conference table.

  Marvin Woods, the rapper’s manager who was also his stepfather, was just as crude. He entered the room and goose-stepped over to the rapper. “Get your blind ass off that phone!” he shouted, snatching the cell phone out of his stepson’s hand. Marvin slapped the telephone up to his ear and started fussing and cussing at the same party on the other end, too. “Fuck you! Hell no!” Marvin looked enough like Ernest to be his real father, and according to the rumor mill, he actually was.

  “Teri, exactly what are we supposed to do here?” Nicole wanted to know, speaking in a whisper.

  “We need to set up his photo session with Eric. That’s what Eric was calling about,” Teri whispered back. Just hearing Eric’s name made Nicole tingle all over.

  “Oh?” she responded, turning her head so Teri wouldn’t see the mysterious smile on her face. “Oh.”

  “My grandmother told me there’d be days like this. Well, this is ‘one of those days,’” Teri decided, in a bone-dry voice.

  Harrison Starr’s granny had told him the same thing that Teri’s had told her. He was having one of those days, too. His had certainly gotten off to a fairly bad start. He had forgotten to set his alarm the night before and had overslept. He’d opened his eyes just in time to take a quick shower and run out the door. He had taken a shortcut to work, only to get caught up in a traffic jam caused by a three-car accident on the freeway. He made it to work on time by the skin of his teeth.

  He usually stopped at Starbucks to get his coffee and a muffin or a bear claw every morning. But this morning he had to settle for that deadly vending machine shit in the studio break room that looked more like pee than coffee. He had dressed in such a hurry that he didn’t realize he had buttoned his shirt wrong until a coworker told him.

  Now, after making what he considered a rhetorical comment about what he thought a woman should do to be a good mate, an irate female caller was giving him hell. This was something he should have been used to by now, but he wasn’t. And that bitch—who should have had something better to do with her time at ten o’clock in the morning—was so loud he had to hold his earphone away from his ear to keep his eardrum from throbbing.

  “…and another thing, black boy, your whole notion of what a woman should do to be a good mate is ill. You got that?”

  Chuck Irby, the perennially distressed station manager, rushed into the booth with a horrified look on his mulish face, rotating his arms like a windmill. Harrison tried his best to ignore him, but Chuck stood in front of him, making Harrison dizzy with all that arm action.

  “Thank you for your comments, sister, but I must move on,” Harrison said, trying to remain calm and diffuse the situation at the same time. “Thank you again, my sister. Have a nice day.” He hung up, grinding his teeth before he spoke again. “Any other listeners like to make a comment?” The same wild woman who had just hung up called again.

  “Nobody else was listening to your tired ass!” she barked.

  “I have to call it the way I see it, ma’am.”

  “You ain’t no Dr. Phil! You ain’t even Oprah! You ain’t nobody!”

  Harrison wiped his brow with the back of his hand and held his breath for a few moments. Some people were like trees when it came to trying to have a rational conversation with them. The woman on the other end of the line was as pliable as a dead sumac.

  “Are you finished this time?” Harrison asked, praying that
he didn’t lose his cool and slide down to the same level as this difficult caller.

  “Naw, I ain’t finished! I bet you ain’t even got no woman, and I ain’t surprised. Probably couldn’t catch one with a fishhook! I seen your picture and you look like a straight-up fag to me!”

  “Hey! You hold on there, now. Don’t go there, sister.”

  “I am not your damn sister! You sissified, suit-wearing punk!”

  “Well, you are sure acting like it.”

  “You dumb, egotistical bastard.”

  Chuck pleaded with Harrison to hang up but to do it very politely. Harrison knew that he was fighting a battle he had no chance of winning and the best way out of it was to let his opponent think she’d won.

  “Please accept my apology,” he said. He hung up before the caller could say another word. He expected her to call again, but after five minutes had passed with no additional calls, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  Chuck left the booth, but he stood outside so he could watch through the glass. Harrison shook his head and wiped his brow again with the back of his hand. He glanced at Chuck and gave him a weak smile and a nod.

  The afternoon was much more pleasant than the morning for Teri. She returned from another meeting shortly after noon. Nicole was on the telephone, pretending like she was on a business call until she saw Teri. Then she started talking the usual trash that she engaged in with her cousin Lola. “Yeah, girl this; yeah, girl that.” Teri shook her head and rolled her eyes at Nicole as she collected a stack of telephone messages from her desk.

  Just as Teri was about to enter her office, something on the radio on Nicole’s desk caught her attention: Harrison Starr’s voice. Had he always sounded that sexy? she asked herself. Nicole ended her telephone call, and Teri stood by the side of her desk listening and enjoying the sound of that sexy voice…

  CHAPTER 28

  “I have to admit that I wasn’t prepared for that kind of response. To all my listeners, I want to say that I am truly sorry…” Harrison’s words puzzled Teri.

  “Sure he is,” Nicole said with a chuckle, sarcasm dripping from her lips like hot wax.

  “What did I miss?”

  “He was spewing some chauvinistic shit about how a woman’s role was to always put her man very high on her list of priorities—if she wants to keep him out of the ‘other’ woman’s bed…”

  “Girl, you have got to be kidding!” Teri said with a profound gasp. She stood there in slack-jawed amazement. “Harrison? Has the man lost his mind?”

  “No wonder you didn’t stay with him…”

  Teri gritted her teeth and considered Nicole’s comment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I know you, and I know you do not put your man that high on your list of priorities. I’d say you put your shoes higher on the scale than your man.”

  A worried look crossed Teri’s face. “Is that what you think? Nicole, you know that’s not true. I work hard at my relationships,” Teri said defensively. “And by the way, you haven’t been in a real relationship yourself since last year,” she reminded, unable to hold back a grin.

  “Touché,” Nicole responded with a sigh. She gave Teri a pensive look before she continued. “I still can’t believe that Harrison chose that nasty-ass Mia over you to take home from Carla’s party. I bet she’s the kind of woman who would even put her man before the good Lord.”

  “Maybe she does, but that still doesn’t mean a damn thing. You do remember that she had come to the party with Dwight. Whatever she was doing to hold on to him didn’t work if she left with another man.”

  “Some men are so trifling,” Nicole decided, throwing her hands up in the air.

  “I won’t argue with you there,” Teri said. Harrison’s seemingly sincere apology on the radio had not softened her.

  Teri attempted to keep her mind on her work and off men the rest of the day, but a man like Harrison was hard not to think about. Despite the fact that they had not been able to maintain their relationship, she gave him a lot of high marks on her imaginary checklist of what she wanted in a man. In her opinion he was handsome, not cute. She hated that word when it came to describing adults. Babies, puppies, and dancing bears were cute. He was intelligent, sensitive, generous, dapper, and he possessed a fantastic sense of humor. He also loved kids…

  She was glad when her line rang. To get her mind off Harrison she reached for it, but Nicole grabbed it on the second ring. With the door to her office open she could hear Nicole’s end of the conversation.

  “If that’s not Trevor’s producer, get him on the line,” she yelled to Nicole. “And when you do get ahold of him, I want you to remind him that I said: we don’t do business by a CP’s time clock. This ‘Colored People’s time’ bullshit does not sit too well with me.” Teri muttered the rest of her comment in a low voice but Nicole heard it anyway. “That’s why the rest of us have to work so hard to make up for that shit.”

  Nicole gave her a blank look and nodded her head in agreement. “Yes, this is Teri Stewart’s office…oh, hello, Harrison,” Nicole announced, looking through Teri’s opened door with her eyes stretched open so wide she looked as though she’d just stepped on a live wire.

  Teri blinked rapidly several times and tried not to look as goofy as Nicole. Just the mention of that man’s name made Teri stiffen. That was bad enough. But she also felt like she had turned into a pillar of salt. What was even worse was the sudden warm itch in her crotch! With an amused look on her face, Nicole waved at Teri and pointed to the telephone. The timing was unbelievable. With Harrison on the telephone asking to speak to Teri, Eric, the man who made Nicole wet between her legs, suddenly strolled into the reception area.

  Working the hell out of a denim jacket and matching jeans, he stopped in front of Nicole’s desk. Like a robot, she turned her head to keep from looking at him right away.

  “Hold on,” she said into the telephone receiver, trying to sound as professional as she could. “Uh, Teri, it’s Harrison Starr calling from the radio station,” she reported. “Are you available to take his call?”

  “I’ll be with him momentarily,” Teri said, her voice cracking. She bounced out of her office and rushed up to Eric and gave him a warm hug.

  “Got it,” Nicole told her. “Harrison, she will be right with you.” As familiar as Nicole was with the features on the telephone on her desk, she hit three wrong buttons before she hit the hold button.

  Eric was amused by this little exchange, but he managed not to show it. “I don’t mind waiting.” His eyes were on Nicole’s face. His gaze was so intense she felt like a burning bush.

  “That’s all right, Eric. Harrison is not going anywhere,” Teri decided. She gave Nicole a confused look and held up one finger. Why the hell is that man calling me? she wondered. She beckoned for Eric to follow her into her office.

  Nicole removed a bottle of water from her purse. She didn’t know who was more stunned, her or Teri. She took a few sips, then wet a tissue and wiped the back of her neck. She sucked in her breath and looked toward Teri’s door.

  Teri waved Eric to one of the two high-back guest chairs facing her desk. While Nicole was still staring at Teri’s door, Teri came back out. She gently closed the door behind her and moved swiftly to the side of Nicole’s desk.

  “What the hell does Harrison want?” she asked. Nicole waited for Miguel and several other coworkers to pass by before she replied.

  “He didn’t say,” Nicole muttered with a questioning look. “I was hoping you’d tell me…”

  “Shit,” Teri mouthed. “I certainly was not expecting a call from him.”

  “Do you want me to tell him you’ll call him back?” Nicole questioned.

  “No, I’ll be with him in a second.” Then, like she was talking to herself, she added, “I have to keep reminding myself that we don’t want to get on his bad side. We’d be up a shitty creek with a broken paddle if his station ever decided to stop promoting our music.”

  Nic
ole took a deep breath and nodded toward Teri’s office. “Uh, what about Eric?”

  “What about him? Oh, he’s only here to discuss a photo shoot. That blind rapper, remember?” Teri said, looking at the blinking red light on the telephone as if it were a ticking bomb. “We both need to get a grip. All we need is for Victor to strut up in here and see us both acting like a couple of schoolgirls.”

  “To dick with Victor,” Nicole mouthed. “He don’t sign my paycheck, you do,” she added, speaking in an exaggerated urban street fashion and rotating her neck ghetto style for more emphasis.

  “Well, as your supervisor, I demand that you get back to work,” Teri said, knowing damn well that she didn’t even know how to scold Nicole properly. Nicole knew it, too. Teri’s words rolled off her back like water off a duck’s.

  “If you need me to take notes for you and Eric, buzz me,” Nicole told Teri. “Please!”

  Teri glanced at Nicole and gave her a wan smile. But then she sucked in a deep breath and shook her finger at Nicole. “You—you behave yourself! Go stick a tampon in that crack of yours if you’ve got to have something in it.” Nicole just blinked and shrugged. Teri exhaled and returned to her office, gently closing the door behind her.